annals of gesture politics

Oh, OK. I thought I knew the way this was going. Your cruelty to the poor and dependent is clear and ongoing, so you park the gays in the churches and let the photographers loose on the heartwarming scenes that ensue. The overall agenda is all about punishing the scroungers rather than a matter of prejudice or instinctive loathing, or enabling those dirty people to engage in gross mimicry of your transcendent ceremony. But to do this you come up with legislation which forces people who support gay marriage to also support the banning of gay marriages in property controlled by the state church. The Labour Party appears to have no difficulty with this, and quite right too. When your enemy demonstrates that their opposition is a matter of prejudice and instinctive loathing then you let them get on with it. Or at least you do on the matter of gay marriage in a church of some kind. The "skivers" can shift for themselves.

Comments

[Strategist]

It also tried to appease more than 100 Tory MPs planning to vote against the legislation by outlining a new "quadruple lock"

Bondage fetishists to a man, I'll be bound. (I will be bound.)

[Charlie]

No, it's an in-group thing. Unless you are white, straight, a graduate, employed at a proper company (or are retired from one), play rugby (or row) or follow those sports, go to church at least sometimes (and your favourite hymn is 'Jerusalem'), you are just not made right.

[Phil]

I can remember when we[1] were courting ridicule or worse by insisting that the struggles of women, Black British and yes even Teh Gaysss were just as valid as, and in no sense a distraction from, the class[2]'s fight against capitalist oppression.

2012 and we're all friends now, unless you actually are Nigel Farage. And I've never known such levels of class hatred.

[1] Not me in particular, but some of us.
[2] You didn't need to specify which class.

[CMcM]

Yeah Phil, I remember that as well. But in those days every (straight) young woman I knew had a poster in their room showing a bride in full wedding day costume doing the washing up with the slogan:"It starts when you sink in his arms and ends with your arms in his sink".

I don't think we could have predicted there would ever be a struggle for gay marriage back then - the tendency[1] was more to idealise the allegedly less oppressive gay model(s) of relationships in counterpoint to marriage.

It's all very rum.

[1} The circles I moved in back then were full of both tendencies & Tendencies.

[Chertiozhnik]

Quoting from your link, the government is
"outlining a new "quadruple lock" that will make it illegal for gay marriage ceremonies to be conducted by the churches of England and Wales."

Why am I not surprised that an apparently simple proposition should be turned by HMG into an burgeoning bureaucratic snarl-up complete with its own Terminology etc.

[Phil]

I remember the university gay & lesbian soc advertising to freshers with the slogan "Because the straight is also the narrow". It was years before I first met a gay man who wasn't a Gay! Man!!, just a man who was gay.

[Cian]

I remember that they generally had the best parties/'bops'.

[john b]

Going back to Charlie's comment, this is precisely the difference in society between now and then. Which is why the Kippers are viewed as risible dinosaurs: they've failed to spot that the rules of conservative society have changed for people who aren't over or pushing retirement age.

New version:
Unless you are white, straight [married or in a long-term relationship], a graduate, employed at a proper company (or are retired from one), play rugby (or row [or soccer]) or follow those sports, go to church [or temple, but probably not mosque] at least sometimes (and your favourite hymn is 'Jerusalem' [irrespective of religion]), you are just not made right.

[Charlie W]

John: yep, that widens the circle a bit. And apartheid SA counted Japanese people as white. But I'm not sure, going by personal experience of British conservatives, and attendance at the odd chartered surveyors rugby sevens tournament, let alone Henley. 'Four Weddings and a Funeral' had a gay person in it, and was popular, but that was a decade ago.

[Charlie W]

No. Eighteen years ago. FFS.

[ajay]

'Four Weddings and a Funeral' had a gay person in it, and was popular

Because he died. It was OK to be gay in the 90s as long as you didn't seem to be enjoying the experience too much.

[hellblazer]

Two gay people; though ajay's point stands.

[Charlie W]

Was reminded by my partner just now that FWAAF featured a gay couple who were not out, and yes, one of them gets the funeral.

Anyway, I am going to assert, on the basis of fuck all evidence really, that British conservatives of all ages are basically operating a don't ask don't tell policy. And the problem for even a straight-talking straight-acting gay person is, obviously, that you can't get married (to a same sex partner) in a way that passes. So it's openly gay marriage or no marriage. And openly gay marriage ruins the ideal of a country church wedding with white dresses etc., an event which a lot of Tory types really really look forward to. Hence government policy (no gay CofE weddings) being what it is.

[Alex]

Mind you, Tory Gay is a pretty well-defined folkway, so much so that there's a whole corpus of novels and several movies.

[belle le triste]

Isn't this more like "Yes, I will tolerate and even quite enjoy the fact of your absurd or obnoxious customs/colour PROVIDED I am at all times allowed a reliable and securely placid bolthole -- viz in this instance my church on any given sunday, etc etc."

[Charlie W]

Except it's not the MCC, it's the state church. Imagine an openly gay royal. That's the sort of challenge this is.

[Charlie W]

Alex: I was wondering how that works. Suspect that the (self-named) LGBTory crowd is fairly distant from what I'm going to label the William Hague / Portillo style, which looks to be resolutely old-fashioned and closeted. I had vaguely thought that Portillo might be out, but on checking it seems that if he is, it's the sort of out that avoids even the mention of the word 'gay'. Not that Labour does much better. They might even do worse.

[Alex]

Although, Gay Anglican is even more of a cliché, as is Gay Courtier if you believe Alan Clark's diary. In the end, they're fine with gay people in the national institutions as crew - it's as passengers that's the problem.

Which is probably something to do with the public/private dichotomy. Aka Charlie's point about the Tory DADT policy.

[CMcM]

I dunno. I reckon the Tory tribe is a unstable alliance. & I don't just mean the Notting Hill set v the Essex fundamentalists on this issue. There a definitely noticeable strain of Gay Tories who come not from the St.John Stevas tradition of 'Oooh, I like a smells & bells and a nice ducal robe, me', but have taken the free market mentality of the pink pound to its logical political conclusion. & that's without even taking into accord those who dabble in the fact free rhetoric of libertarianism, with it's total indifference to sexual orientation. Even UKIP has it's youth wing (stop sniggering) which, according to this, is more libertarian than Empire Loyalist.

It could even be that Cameron launched all this thinking, as jamie suggests, he'd create a liberal smokescreen for himself whilst bashing the poor - but miscalculated, and found he's let a parliamentary bomb off in his own face. He's also managed to annoy even the churches he was theoretically trying to protect from criticism of their own bigotry. It's a total snafu in policy terms from No.10's perspective, surely?

[CMcM]

account, not accord. Damn this predictive text.

[Alex]

It's a total snafu in policy terms from No.10's perspective, surely?

You mean...David Cameron introduced a policy initiative without fully considering the likely consequences? Surely not.

[CMcM]

David Cameron introduced a policy initiative without fully considering the likely consequences?

Welcome to Dave's Christmas panto:Anglicans reject additional protection as unwarranted interference in its internal affairs: MCB demands additional protection on discrimination grounds.

[Chris Williams]

By the way, is it just me, or is anyone else utterly bemused about the inclusion of the Church in/of Wales in all this? I thought that we disestablished them in the 1920s. Did I miss a memo?

[CMcM]

I wondered about that as well Charlie. Pure speculation on my part, but I wonder if there is some tangle of obscure and only spottily updated constitutional/church law where Wales is sometimes treated as independent of England and sometimes as a constituent province of EnglandAndWalesAndSometimesMonmouthshire.

The logical outcome of this mess is, of course, the disestablishment of the CofE, to allow it exactly the same rights and protections as all other religions and no more. Wouldn't any Modernising Conservative Prime Minster be proud to have that on their record?

[CMcM]

Sorry to Chris for mistaking him for Charlie. Or possibly vice versa. Anyway, sorry.

[ajay]

MCB demands additional protection on discrimination grounds.

Yes, I loved that. "Your refusal to give legal force to our deranged bigotry as well as your own is an example of racism!"

[Richard J]

It is a bit undergrad "who's the real bigot, here, huh?"